myTunes

If there were a way for another person to somehow tap into my inner sound track, I would be committed to the nearest psychiatric facility before sundown this evening. 

My mind is constantly blaring some form of music unless I am reading, talking or typing on this keyboard.  Has it always been like that?  I’m not sure, but lately I am cracking myself up when I catch myself humming and/or whistling silently to some of the most bizarre tunes imaginable.

This morning I staggered into the bathroom to get ready for the day.  As I swirled a neat strip of toothpaste on my brush, the noise broke through to my consciousness.  Here is what I was humming, with gusto:

Tantum ergo Sacramentum

Veneremur cernui:

Et antiquum documentum

Novo cedat ritui:

Praestet fides supplementum

           Sensuum defectui.          

My Catholic readers, fallen or otherwise, will recognize these lyrics and chime right in just as soon as the church organist slams fingers onto the keyboard, producing a thunderous introductory chord.  For many of you the sound will trigger an immediate memory of the cloying incense used in the rituals marking transubstantiation, the conversion of what appears to be plain bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Why on earth would I be humming this solemn hymn while I stare into the mirror at a sleepy-eyed woman who, at the moment, is foaming at the mouth?

Yesterday I was walking Coqui the Spoiled Dog and her friend Romeo.  It was 95º on a day when the normal high in Atlanta is allegedly 84º.  All three of us were panting like porn stars and anxious to get the deed done.  When one of the four-legged ones stopped to inspect a fire hydrant, I tuned into the MP3 player in my head.  Frosty the Snowman was thumpety, thump, thumping through my pathetic brain.  Look at Frosty go!

I spend a major portion of my time with only Coqui as company, so unless I turn on something electronic in the house, I am surrounded by silence.  Since I find silence too deafening in large doses, I guess my subconscious does what it can to fill the void.

Whatever the reason, my lips have taken on a semi-permanent pucker from what can only be described as a facial tick that accompanies the sound of whistling that occurs only in my head.  I look like I am sucking on a soda straw or worse, taking a toke on a joint.  When someone I know suddenly drives by and waves, I am always wondering if they got a look at that mouth of mine.

Come to think of it, a lot of myTunes come from the liturgical charts rather than any top 40.  Another one that pops up often is this:

Bring flowers of the fairest,
Bring flowers of the rarest,
From garden and woodland
And hillside and vale;
Our full hearts are swelling,
Our Glad voices telling
The praise of the loveliest
Rose of the vale.

 This one refers to the Virgin Mary, whose statue was crowned every May with a circlet of fresh flowers.  Down the center church aisle, little girls in snow white dresses slowly preceded the eighth grade girl deemed the holiest in the school and named the May Crowning Queen.  Needless to say, I never had the honor.

In fact, heathen that I am, I haven’t been near a church of any denomination since 2006, and that was only because my grandmother’s celestial sendoff was held in our hometown Catholic church.  Either my daily incantations of Latin hymns and other church-related songs are signs of Somebody trying to get my attention OR the part of my brain that remembers details from grade school is having a second childhood.  And here’s the worst part.  I remember these things word…for…word!